AirNZ review
A pin to make life easier
We were living in NZ for the last 6+ years. It’s just expected that we’d flown AirNZ a few times. And we did. On this post, I’m going to talk about our last flight, from Auckland to Tokyo, in September 2016. We flew economy class, for a bit over 11 hours on a night flight.
It was our first official overseas flight for this round-the-world trip and we had 3 checked bags, one for Angelo (that carries all the stuff for us, like board games, toiletry, medicine, mosquito nets, etc), one nearly empty (we knew we’d buy stuff in Japan) and one with gifts for our family in Brazil. We were traveling almost carry-on for the first time.
[wp_ad_camp_5]
In Auckland Airport, waiting for our take-off!
As usual, we arrived at the airport early. We always try to, just to be on the safe side. We got to do the self-check-in for the first time, and it was pretty cool. There were a few machines turned off, a few frozen and 2 AirNZ crew members there to assist all the 20 families doing their check-in at the same time. Still, they were helpful, polite and nice. It may have taken us 20 minutes to do it all because we were waiting for one of them to help us with the checked luggage. It was still a lot faster than the regular check-in line.
The airplane was super new. We’ve flown in AirNZ planes that were pretty sad, but this one was amazing. Everything worked perfectly: the touchscreen, the earphones, all the buttons, the ventilation. The seats were comfy (even though they weren’t spacious) and we were able to rest OK in our economy seats. Even the temperature and humidity were good – not the freezing dry cold from most flights.
The kids (including Melissa – she refused, though) received a kid pack with color pencils and an activity book, a few stickers, and an AirNZ pin. To be really honest, they never use the packs, but they have fun looking through it nonetheless. This time, Coral used it while she watched movies. I think 2 of them still have the pins.
José giving out the candies at the end of the flight – pretty professional!
Since we ordered the kid’s meal for the kids, their food came first. I love this because it enables us to help them before our food comes around. It’s not exclusive to AirNZ, though. All our recent flights were like this. I also like to order the child meal for them because it’s usually a little better looking than the grown-up version. The food we had on this flight was just the best food we’d ever had in an airplane. It tasted like food, looked pretty and even smelled good. I ate a lot and I’m not very fond of airplane food.
[wp_ad_camp_5]
We were flying overnight, so we had agreed with the kids that they could watch one movie, 2 if they were really not tired, but then they’d had to turn everything off and sleep. They all finished one movie and slept. It’s awesome that the food is served at the beginning of the flight – that way, they watched their movie while eating and were able to sleep as soon as the trays were collected. The cabin lights were turned down and we slept. I slept uncomfortably but slept anyway. Even Coral fell asleep as soon as we turned the TV off.
The toilets had entertaining butterfly wallpaper. I found it pretty amusing and only found out those species don’t exist on my last visit to the loo. Halfway to Tokyo, the place had pee all over – I guess someone flushed without closing the lid. Horrible. Thankfully, there were still 3 other rooms to use.
An hour to go, one of the flight attendants came around as asked if one of the kids would like to help her give out the candies. They hesitated a bit, but José went and he had fun. It was the first time ever they were asked a thing like that and we were surprised – a good kind of surprised. José was very proud of himself afterward and we believe it was a good experience for him.
When we got our bags after we landed, we were disappointed for the first time: one of our bags came out wet and smelling like fish. We did not complain, though because we wanted to go home and everything else was so nice that we didn’t feel like it. And it was the empty one.
José proud of himself after ‘working’ showing off his reward
It was one of the best flight we’ve had so far. It was comfortable enough, had nice food, great service, was on time and everything worked perfectly!
What was the best flight you’ve had?
[wp_ad_camp_5]
